Good, very well executed homage to Godzilla like monster films

Rating: 9/10 (13 July 2013)

As much as I enjoy action, I have to say that the 5 most important roles here were perfectly cast; every one of them couldn't have been improved on. There's the fighter who lost his brother, the female Japanese orphan who wants revenge, the highly focused task force commander directing all operations and two high strung researchers running shotgun on the whole thing. These last two almost steal the show several times and that's amazing considering all that's going on.
Charlie Hunman as Raleigh and Rinko Kikuchi as Mako had to make their mental and physical pairing look real (and plausible) to make it all work and they do. Probably for me the weakest part of the movie was the CGI which is state of the art and impressive, but still a little too artificial; it sometimes feels as if you're watching an animated comic book. But the ideas are big, different and fun to follow. What if we were attacked by giant creatures from another dimension? Could we cope? This really fanciful story must have seemed impossible to film at first blush and it's really very impressive that Guillermo Del Toro pulled it off with such apparent success.
Definitely worth seeing for every young boy out there, especially, though my wife and I enjoyed it as well.